Kapil Saxena

I read half of the article and skimmed through the rest, and what you say makes sense; however I have a different philosophy with the open-source testing tools. Most of the testers just give up when they see lot of files that they have downloaded and none of them is an executable. Why is that so? A tester can go ahead and learn to execute it by compiling or using the tool from command line itself. In my experience, I have seen that open-source tools (Some or most) have great potential if a tester doesn’t give up on learning it and getting to a stage where he / she starts using it during the testing activity.

Having said that, in my start-up (It is going to be launched officially to the world in a week from now) we have Research and Development team which focuses on Open-Source contribution and we see that it is not less than a commercial software or a product. We do not want to settle for less just because it is open-source. We want to make easy for software testers to learn our tool or software and see how it can add value to their testing activity. We are game for it and you will see our contribution with usage guide or demo video(s) when we launch.

However, while I want to help those category of testers who want the cakewalk stuff; I still believe in compiling and making the open-source tool work for me or add more features to it with the help of my team instead of going away from open-source.

Last, but not least a nice article! Keep writing whenever you feel like 🙂

Thanks for your effort in writing this and sharing it with the world. Peace!

Hello Oliver,

Thanks for your comments, but let me tell you that I am in no way against OSS. In fact, like you, I too prefer using OSS compared to Commercial ones. Like you I am too impressed by them, the way they are developed and I agree with you that all this still doesn’t mean that “these tools are perfect!”. But I am not biased against Commercial Tools. Please understand that through this article, I’ve tried to explain what common testers (or teams) miss to understand while selecting a tool. Most of the time, I’ve seen people blindly following that OSS is good, even when their needs are not fully filled. There are other cases as well where people just neglect the power of Commercial tools.

Said this, I think you’ve too much against Commercial tools. Love for something doesn’t necessarily means hatred for others. Let’s take all points you’ve raised for Commercial Tools one by one:

1. Download: I really don’t think that with this much competition in market, any company not allowing users to download tools. As far as I’ve seen, almost all testing tools are available for download. For exceptions, if they exist, I think they are not doing good to themselves. But still I’d love to know which Commercial Testing Tools are not available for download?

2. Installation: I beg to differ with you on this 1000%. In fact, the beauty of Commercial Tools lies in easy installation. No matter how complex they may be w.r.t usage, but except for clicking few NEXT buttons, you won’t have to do much. QTP, LoadRunner, Test Complete, etc all good tools are very easy to setup.

3. Test-Versions: Almost every Commercial tool have trial versions available, which means you’ve few days with you to explore the tool. Test Complete from Smart Bear gives you 30 days period to evaluate tool with full features. Even you’ll get several emails from technical team during this trial period to help you in case you’re stuck somewhere. Is this possible with any OSS? Everybody knows the answer.

4. You mentioned “commercial often are just able to wiggle their way around it causing many test automation projects to fail down the track because of holes in tool functionality”. I don’t really know about your testing experience but how can you blame any tools functionality as cause of project failure. It’s altogether team’s decision which tool to use? Whether you do a POC or you select tool based on your experience, it’s your choice. You can’t blame others for your decisions. This is the core of this article. You’ve to be SMART while selecting tools as per your needs and environment. Blindly favouring some tool may result in unexpected results.

I won’t mind if you don’t like my article. It’s your choice. My only intention is to spread the awareness that tool selection must be done wisely. Many times, you won’t have time to do POC or explore tool. At other times, you’ve enough time to decide. Whatever may be the case, you’ve to evaluate all available options against all pros & cons before going with any tool.